Expectations ... Alastair Clarkson is chasing a second premiership. Source: Salpigtidis George / News Limited
IF the first premiership came prematurely, the second is overdue.
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The wait creates an inescapable weight, an unwanted level of tension and anxiety as judgment rests so heavily on the result.
For what is this period of Hawthorn excellence if not franked by a second title?
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Victory will mark an incremental climb back to the top, as meticulous as it has been premeditated. It will be nothing less than what is deserved.
Defeat will be measured through the lament of unfulfillment or worse, the stain of under-achievement.
Alastair Clarkson's Hawks won the 2008 flag as a brilliant, brash, cocky and unsociable force. In victory they were assigned the deed of dynasty.
While they proved good enough to snatch the crown, they were ill-equipped to reign. Ambition was squandered.
But the nucleus was too good to flare and extinguish.
The second coming has proven sustainable and significant.
It has come via a different path. Where that first flag was won with homegrown stocks — only Stuart Dew and Brent Guerra had careers of any consequence elsewhere — the current model is refurbished with hand-picked parts.
Specific needs were identified and resolved. It was unashamed and brave; bucking the industry conservatism that still holds sway.
First the game-breaker Shaun Burgoyne and the key backman Josh Gibson were added. Then the ruck/forward in David Hale. The following year it was the young sharpshooter Jack Gunston. And finally the linchpin defender to complete the puzzle in the form of Brian Lake.
Rather than plan for future years beyond the horizon that might never dawn, Hawthorn seized what was before it and forged this premiership quest.
Through this three-year phase and accumulation of 18 wins, then 17 and the minor premiership, followed by a club record 19, it has exercised a permanent hold on favouritism.
While the gap has always been exaggerated, the Hawks have been accepted and exalted as the best. But such opinion is brittle without silverware to make the case.
The frailties and realities of last year's decider were lost on no one inside the camp.
Clarkson didn't stand still, mope, rue his luck and hope for better. He retooled his operation, prepared to blunt his most lethal weapon, Lance Franklin, to achieve a sharper collective edge.
His team has rehearsed the art of width for this very possibility when a charging force would need to be picked apart.
It is a coaching effort too readily overlooked in the season rankings.
But by their own words, all that has been achieved is something of a pre-season to return to the opportunity not taken 52 weeks ago.
Everything is invested in what happens next. It's the double shot of urgency.
Two months ago the challenge seemed formidable enough as it would require Hawthorn to beat the defending champs and an infernal nemesis in consecutive games.
Both missions have been achieved. Each requiring a stern examination of nerve.
The Hawks jangled through a half against the Swans before asserting their will and skill.
Last week they had to resist a conspiracy of the fates as misfortune and dreaded familiarity mounted against them. It was a crushing burden to crawl from under.
At the final siren liberation was grand. Still, it is not enough.
The fear is quite perceptible. A prospect that sits unnerving. A notion that has struck some of the greatest advocates dumb.
In the swarm at Subiaco arose the possibility that has coloured the build-up.
Has Fremantle snatched the mantle of standard-bearer just as Hawthorn was preparing to breast the tape, as the Lions did to Essendon at the climax of 2001?
Have the Hawks arrived at the coronation only to find a multi-headed beast has stolen the throne?
At the last comes the ultimate test for a team that has served its penance. The twelfth labour of Hawthorn is to slay the Purple Peril.
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